In the centre of the all-black background sits an unmitigated vertical rectangle with a faint blue tinge.
Perfectly geometrical, powerfully capacious, totally impersonal.
As if as a preview of the music contained within, the artwork displayed on the cover of Plastikman's latest album Consumed highlights many of the characteristics that have come to be associated with the Canadian artist's sound. Influenced by the beginnings of the techno movement, Plastikman, aka Richie Hawtin, has emerged as one of the most archetypal and forward-thinking producers in the world of dance music, and his latest album takes yet another leap into the technological abyss. "I'd progressed quite a lot musically," explains Hawtin. "I didn't want to come back with the typical Plastikman album people would expect - I wanted to use the audience that had begun to follow my previous albums and give them something new, something different, something a little more challenging. Consumed travels a lot deeper than any of my previous albums, and in many ways it contains more information, even though it uses a lot less."
Highly textured, hauntingly echoic and uncompromisingly minimal - in order to fathom the depth of Consumed, listeners must allow themselves to be totally absorbed; the delicate changes and understated build up of layers upon layers are so subtle, they are easily unnoticed. According to Hawtin: "I think a lot of what I do is influenced by other art mediums... such as the minimalists of the 40s and 50s. Their art took the chance to express things in a very slight manner, through subtle changes in texture and colour, and it really left the person to give time to the piece. A lot of minimalist art is built from a collection of smaller elements - once a person allows themselves to get into it, the sum of their parts is a lot greater; you realise the space they didn't use. I use these visual ideas and apply them on a sonic level, it has as much to do with the spaces between sounds." A method leaving a strong impression on Hawtin's music - each new sound adding a vital piece to the overall feel. Utilising every space, or empty space, he creates a resounding sound-scape based on a 'less is more' approach.
"I'm trying to strip everything back," explains Hawtin. "As you get older you start to acquire things, but it's never been in my nature to have one of everything, or ten of everything. I need what I need to survive and be comfortable, but I don't need to go overboard, and I guess this has just been channelled into my music. In any type of art you're doing, whatever is happening in your life is kind of channelled through." However, Hawtin's love of the minimal has not always been represented in his music. In the early 90s, under the guise of Circuit Breaker, he was responsible for taking the acid sound that dominated much early techno to the next level with anthems such as 'F.U.S.E.', and established his own Plus 8 Records label with friend and fellow producer John Acquaviva. "Plus 8 was started at a time when were trying to reinvent dance music and keep pushing forward, but in a way it has become kind of limited by that. When we established the label, dance music was still a very diverse form, and that's why I liked it in the beginning because there wasn't so many barriers and things you were supposed to do. That's where I've come from and it still plays a part in what I'm doing today. Nowadays I think more walls have come up as people are beginning to expect certain things from certain producers, and that's sort of what this album is about. Basically, it's just good electronic music - it's based on the sort of music I've always been into, it's just taking a look at it from a slightly different angle."
Culminating this past experience, Hawtin recently established the Minus label as an avenue for his new styles and sounds to develop.
"Minus was set up for new projects," said Hawtin. "It's for me to experiment and work on ventures which aren't just record related. I guess the best thing to say about Minus is, it is only Minus - it isn't Minus Records or Minus Recordings because that narrows the scope too much."
This notion of pushing the music forward stems from a childhood spent on the fringe of a city which housed some of the most forward-thinking producers of electronic music. Together with Hawtin, Detroit artists such as Mike Banks and Carl Craig slowly emerged at the helm of the techno movement.
"Back then there was only about 20 producers in the world making that kind of techno," explains Hawtin, "and most of them were from Detroit, so they had a huge influence. These days there's been a greater acceptance of the music overseas, and there are also a greater number of people producing that kind of sound, so I don't think it's as important as it once was.
"To me a DJ's job isn't just about getting people dancing - it's about giving people new experiences and opening them to new sounds. Anyone can keep a crowd on the floor for six hours if they play the right records, but it's also important to challenge them and slow them down, and even make people walk away so that you can build it up again... That's where my music is heading. It isn't just about dance music, it's about being consumed, about making you think."
Like all great artists, Hawtin's development is constantly progressing - unique but evolutionary, powerful yet subtle, pushing the boundaries by stripping things back to the core. Can minimalist music be taken any further?